Relating the Visual and the Headline in Chinese Print Advertisements

Abstract

The most important components in modern print advertisements are the visual and the headline. The interplay between these two components is poorly understood, and is typically judged by experience, feelings or common sense. Based on classical rhetoric, Gui Bonsiepe's visual/verbal figures and other literature sources including Chinese ones, this paper examines the relationship between the visual and the headline in 1,562 Chinese print advertisements collected from Longyin Review — the only Chinese creative advertising reference periodical. The study develops a typology for analyzing these relationships from two aspects: Physical and Conceptual. The physical aspect looks at the visual ordering of the visual and the headline, and the conceptual aspect concerns the ways in which these two components jointly form and present creative ideas. The typology provides a new tool for Chinese advertising practitioners to review their own or other people's work, and it supplements what Bonsiepe has done. The findings compare the data in different ways and draw preliminary conclusions on the linkages between the various physical and conceptual relationships.